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Black Mexico
Race Times
University of New Mexico Press r Albuquerque
Edited by
BEN VINSON III
and
MATTHEW RESTALL
andsociety from Colonial to Modern
:ss
DESIGN AND LAYOUT: MELISSA TANDYSH
Composed in 10/13.5 Janson Text Lt Std
Display type is Bernhard Modern Std
Black Mexico: race and society from colonial to modern times /
edited by Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall.
p. cm. — (Dialogos)
Get custom essay samples and course-specific study resources via course hero homework for you service – Include s bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8263-4701-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Blacks—Mexico—History. 2. Blacks—Mexico—Social conditions.
3. Blacks—Race identity—Mexico. 4. Mexico—Race relations.
5. Mexico—History—Spanish colony, 1540-1810.
6. Mexico—History—1810- I. Vinson, Ben, III. II. Restall, Matthew, 1964-
F1392.B55B55 2009
972’.oo496—dc22
2009020457
© 2009 by the University ofNew Mexico Pre:
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
19 18 17 16 15 14 345678
l ibr a r y o f CONGRESS CATALOGING-1N-PUBLICATION data
BEN VINSON III
96
From
■J- ON APRIL 18, 1793, MEXICAN MILITARY INSPECTOR DON BENITO
Perez drafted a lengthy letter to the viceroy detailing the state of affairs
among the free-colored communities and militiamen that he had spent
several months reviewing. Contained within the pages of his report were
opinions that were probably consistent with the views of many elites of
the time. In his estimation, the colony’s interior was crowded with unem
ployed blacks who congregated on the outskirts ofmajor urban areas such
as Mexico City. He wrote that the best way of dealing with this poten
tially troublesome lot was to be zealous in charging tribute, which would
have the effect of pushing blacks to the coasts as they sought to evade the
heavy burden of unwanted taxation.1 On the one hand Perez’s comments
revealed an interesting understanding ofthe black predicament: the quite
sizeable free black population found itselfstruggling to survive financially
in freedom. Any efforts to circumscribe their freedom even more (in this
case, through exacting straining financial demands) produced visceral
reactions. Black populations would move in order to defend their liberty.
But while Perez’s letter offered some astute understandings of colonial
Dawn til Dusk
Black Labor in Late Colonial Mexico
From Dawn ’til Dusk 91
black life, they were also a bit misguided. He ignored some of the com
plex realities of black life with which even he must have been quite famil
iar. The colonial archives are filled with evidence of gainful black labor
and enterprise. Indeed, urban blacks in particular were probably found
employed more often than not.
However, as evidenced in Perez’s dispatch, it was easy for free coloreds
to be misunderstood by their society. Even when they worked a trade,
sometimes for the government itself, innocent and industrious activity
could be egregiously mistaken for criminality and deviancy. In October
of 1785, Leberina Azevedo, the wife ofVicente Medina, wrote an impas
sioned letter to the viceroy begging that her husband, a free-colored mili
tiaman, not be incarcerated and shipped to Puerto Rico for being found on
the streets ofMexico City carrying sharp scissors. He was not a vagabond
toting an illegal weapon she pleaded, but a hired employee of the Royal
tobacco factory where he had responsibilities in the cigar-making indus
try. He had been found simply carrying a tool of his trade.2
Similarly, at 8:00 p.m. on the night ofJuly 20, 1789, Lucio Antonio
Rodriguez (another black soldier) was apprehended on the streets ofMex
ico City for carrying a knife. According to his testimony, he had recently
gotten off work from the Royal custom’s house where he held a job as
an artisan. Like Medina, his knife was his occupational tool, and he had
been using it that evening to cut wineskins and boots at the house of don
Juan Maranon. Rather than being caught committing a crime, he had been
apprehended while innocently going about his daily business. After sev
eral rounds of testimony lasting for over a year, proof of his impeccable
character and service record were provided and all charges were cleared.
However, until then, he had to endure the humiliation of being dragged
through the courts.3 In a world where stereotypes and laws inhibiting the
black population lingered, distortions regarding black laborers and black
employment persisted.
From the standpoint of scholars, labor has been one of the great top
ics of study regarding black life in the colonial Americas. In many ways,
research on slavery has captivated and monopolized historical scholarship,
yielding tremendously important results that have greatly improved our
understanding of the colonial and modern worlds. We now know more
about how slavery contributed to the development of capitalism, global
economies, world systems, Western notions of modernity, and colonial/
metropolitan relationships. We have sharper understandings ofhow slavery
98 BEN VINSON III
contributed to the structuring ofsocial hierarchies and racial systems, as
well as how itimpacted independence movements and the mundane opera
tion of everyday politics.”* But while slavery certainly occupied a founda
tional and prominent role in the colonial black experience, it is important
to remember that it was only a part of black life. Particularly in the Latin
American context, free coloreds such as VicenteMedina and Lucio Antonio
Rodriguez, comprised a substantial workforce that also strongly influenced
broadersocial, political, and economic processes.* Their activities in places
such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba are well known but, in other colo
nial contexts, such as Mexico, Bolivia, and Guatemala, their worlds are
less understood. At least for Mexico, this is not necessarily due to scholarly
neglect. Over the past several decades, a number ofimportant studies have
been produced that have either featured free coloreds, or have included
them in broader analyses of regional and local economies.6 However,
few attempts at achieving a general synthesis of free-colored labor have
been achieved.
This chapter is an initial attempt at expanding our knowledge of freeblack Mexican labor, especially for the late eighteenth century. There may
havebeenfewmomentsinMexican historythatpresent better circumstances
for evaluating free-colored labor. The 1790s marked the eve ofindependence
and the close ofthe colonial era. If, as some have argued, the eighteenth
century was a period ofgeneral prosperity in Mexico, where greater social
mobility for blacks was possible due to a weakening caste system, a stron
ger class system, and greater racial hybridity, then these years offer one of
the richest opportunities to take the pulse ofAfro-Mexican socioeconomic
progress. Second, the production of an extraordinary colony-wide census,
commissioned by viceroy Revillagigedo between 1790 and 1793, provides
an unparalleled opportunity to examine free-colored occupational habits.
Since the census was raised to identify potential recruits for military duty,
detailed information on women (including their professions) was largely
excluded, as was data on the native population. Nonetheless, combined with
other sources, such as parish registers and tribute data, the late colonial
period is one for which we may be able to know the Afro-Mexican popula
tion intimately.
It is important to stress that for Afro-Mexicans, the eighteenth cen
tury was in many ways a mulato and pardo century and that, atsome level,
blackness and the black experience should be evaluated on these terms. As
a colony, Mexico experienced tremendous demographic growth, nearly
From Dawn ’til Dusk 99
doubling in size from four to seven million inhabitants between the 1650s
and the late 1700s. The Afro-Mexican population grew, too, more than
tripling from roughly 116,000 in the 1640s to almost 370,000 by the
1790s.7 But with the decline ofthe slave trade after the 1640s, much ofthe
expansion of the Afro-Mexican population came not through substantial
increases in the shipment of new slaves, or by large measures of endoga
mous natural growth among free blacks (negros), but rather through the
miscegenation of existing slaves and free blacks with mestizos, whites,
natives and other groups.8 By the 1790s, the Revillagigedo census only
identified a scant five hundred morenos, or “pure blacks,” throughout New
Spain, along with another 6,100 black “Africans.”9
Apart from being a mulatto century, one might also argue that the
1700s were an era of Afro-Mexican success. Using the lens of “success”
to discuss the black experience offers an important alternative to some
traditional models of studying black life. Particularly in Latin American
contexts, life after slavery is often processed within the framework of
assimilation and mestizaje. Interpreting life after slavery through the
“success” lens opens new opportunities for engaging blacks on different
terms, notably ones that compel us to measure free-colored populations
in light of their respective societies and that demand us to reckon with
blacks as a group struggling for their own internal cultural, political, and
social cohesion.
Two potential barometers for measuring black success rest in com
paring the economic livelihood of blacks in the 1700s against benchmarks
from the previous two centuries, as well as against the conditions of black
life in the greater Atlantic world. In simplest form, an argument can be
made that because so many ofMexico’s blacks were free in the eighteenth
century, their liberty should be celebrated over the more pervasive slavery
that governed a great deal ofNew Spain’s black life from the 1500s into the
1600s, and that shackled so much of the black population in slave regimes
throughout the French and British Caribbean in the 1700s. Some might
also be persuaded to argue that the very prevalence of black freedom in
New Spain during the eighteenth century partially compensated for the
many misfortunes thatsome blacks encountered when they took marginal
and menial positions.
Ofcourse, this vision ofeighteenth-century black success in New Spain
comes with some caveats. While most Afro-Mexicans were indeed free dur
ing the 1700s, the truth is that slavery persisted as an institution until 1829.
IOO BEN VINSON III
In the years preceding emancipation, anywhere from three thousand to ten
thousand slaves worked in a range ofprofessions including mining, textiles,
and sugar cultivation. Some ofthe regions where slaves continued working
included the cane fields ofCordoba, the developing frontier areas of north
ern Alexico (Sonora, Durango, and Sinaloa), the textile center ofQueretaro,
as well as select coastal regions including Tamiahua and Acapulco. As strict
trade controls and monopolies were removed from ports throughoutMexico
in the eighteenth century, a small, renewed slave trade appeared in tropical
regions like Tabasco. Essentially, what these factors mean is that any dis
cussion of eighteenth-century Afro-Alexican success must be situated in a
context in which slavery continued to exist, even ifonly on a small scale. In
some ofthe locations where slavery remained visible, the cultural impact of
the system may have borne implications upon free-colored social relation
ships, as well as their prospects for advancement in society.
The meaning of free-colored economic progress must also be situ
ated in a society characterized by great inequality. In broad measure, the
eighteenth century was generally one of economic growth for Mexico on
the whole. The colony ranked first among the world’s silver producers and
miningtriggered the development ofa variety ofindustries, including agri
cultural, ceramic, and textile production. Yet at the same time, the story
ofMexican economic progress was greatly disjointed. Equal opportunities
were not available for all, and while more millionaires were created in New
Spain than anywhere else in the Spanish empire, the Alexican working
masses saw a 25 percent drop in real earnings during the last half of the
eighteenth century, thanks in part to inflation, crop failures, and epidem
ics. While some free coloreds were absorbed into the middle class, others
who occupied the lowest strata of the economy were exposed to extreme
income volatility, squalid poverty, and exploitation by a supremely power
ful elite class. Was this a fate better than slavery? Indeed, was this success?
Arguably yes, arguably no. However, such observations only seem to beg
the question: to what degree should black success be measured against the
benchmark ofslavery or against the material opportunities and livelihoods
ofothers who were free?10
The following sections, essentially a series of economic narratives, do
not pretend to fully answer the questions raised here, but they help pro
vide a context for resolving them. By providing a broad understanding of
the general contours of free-colored economic life, and highlighting the
roles that blacks played in specific local and regional economies, we can
From Dnivn ’til Dusk io i
arrive at a better grasp of how free coloreds lived, articulated, and defined
their freedom, as well as how they translated it into opportunities that
intersected with the most powerful forces ofthe colonial economy.
Colonial Snapshots:
A Portrait of New Spain’s Free-Colored Labor Scene
Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century and up until the
outbreak ofthe wars for independence, Afro-Mexicans comprised roughly
io percent of New Spain’s population.” Table 5.1 provides occupational
information on 11,730 free coloreds (mainly males) who came from twenty
different provinces, districts, and urban centers throughout the viceroy
alty (see Maps 5.1 and 5.2). Combined, these regions housed approximately
64,000 free coloreds, or roughly 17 percent of the nearly 370,000 AfroMexicans who lived in Mexico during the 1790s.”
In a predominantly agricultural society, it should not surprise us that
agriculture was the largest arena ofwork for free coloreds.13 Entire prov
inces, such as Igualapa, Guazacoalcos (Acayucan), and Tampico housed
scores of labradores (farmers) and baqueros (cowboys), almost to the near
exclusion of other professions. Indeed, the labrador may have been the
most common black male occupation in colonial Mexico. Using census
records alone, it is hard to distinguish among the labradores and baqueros
who owned their own plots or flocks, and those who were sharecroppers,
hacienda laborers, and ranch hands.14 Ofthose who worked as employees
on the larger estates, differences in salary existed between seasonal work
ers and year-round hacienda residents. While seasonal workers could gen
erally benefit from high wages paid during harvest seasons, they did not
always have access to adequate housing and their employment was irregu
lar throughout the year. Meanwhile, laborers who lived permanently on
an estate might have enjoyed better lodging facilities and more continual
employment, yet at the same time they could incur greater debts there,
where they also typically bought their goods and wares. All ofthe earnings
of agriculturalists and ranchers were further subjected to market forces.
Fluctuations in product value and levels of occupational experience also
affected wage differentials?5
Some of the free-colored agricultural workforce was mobile. As evi
denced in regions such as the Pacific coast as early as the sixteenth century,
black populations both enslaved and free, moved from estate to estate, or
102 BEN VINSON III
TABLE 5.1. Free-Colored Labor in Late Colonial Mexico, 1780—1794
Economic Sector
982 8.4
17 .1
6,160 52.5
Number of
Workers
170
1,961
101
306
230
76
11,730
1,113
133
261
15
119
86
1.4
16.7
.9
2.0
2.6
.7
99.9
.1
1.0
.7
Percentage of
Workforce (%)
9.5
1.1
2.2
Source: AGN, Padrones, vols. 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 35, and 37; AGN, I.G., vol. 53-A;
I.G., vol. 416-A, Acayucan, 1795, Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologia y Historia (BNAH)
Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes Expediente formado en virtud de las
diligencias hechas por los alcaldes ordinarios al gobernador intendente Don Manuel
de Flon, Puebla, 1795; Archivo Historico de la Ciudad de Mexico (AHCM), Ciudad de
Mexico, vol. 1;Juan Andrade Torres, El comercio de esclavos en la provincia de Tabasco (Siglos
XV1-XIX) (Villahermosa, Mexico: Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco, 1994),
60-61;Jorge Amos Martinez Ayala, Epa! Epa! Toro Prieto, Toro Prieto (Morelia: Institute
Michaocano de Cultura, 2001), 67-69; Bruce Castleman, “Social Climbers in a Colonial
Mexican City: Individual Mobility within the Sistema de Castas in Orizaba, 1777-1791,”
ColonialLatin American Review (CLAR) 10, no. 2 (2001): 242-44; David A. Brading,
“Grupos etnicos: Clases y estructura ocupacional en Guanajuato (1792),” in Historiay
poblacidn en Mexico (SiglosXVI-XIX), ed. Thomas Calvo, 256 (Mexico City: El Colegio
Transport and services
Construction
Metal, wood, pottery
Textiles, dress, shoes,
leatherworking
Arts and entertainment
Food and drink
Commerce
Administrative,
professional,
church, military
Agricultural, fishing,
and pastoral
Tobacco
Mining and refining
Mill workers3
Other industry13
Other
Unknown
Total
From Dawn ’til Dusk i°3
de Mexico, 1994); Wu, “The Population ofthe City ofQueretaro in 1791 fJournal ofLatin
American Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 293; Guillermina del Valle Pavon, “Transformaciones de
la poblacion afromestiza de Orizaba segun los padrones de 1777 y 1791,” in Pardos, niulatos
y libertos, Sexto encuentro de Afromexianistas, 88-93 (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana,
2001); and Juan Carlos Reyes G., “Negros y afromestizos en Colima, siglos XVI-XIX,” in
Prcsencia africana en Mexico, ed. Luz Maria Montiel Martinez, 301 (Mexico City: Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y Artes, 1993).
Note: The study includes seven cities (Guanajuato, Valladolid, Queretaro. Orizaba,
Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca), and thirteen provinces/districts (Acayucan. Tabasco,
Guamelula, Tixtla, Acapulco, Tlapa, Chilapa, Motines, Tampico, Colima, Igualapa,
Sanjuan del Rio, and Irapuato).
3 These workers were all in the mining industry.
11 Get custom essay samples and course-specific study resources via course hero homework for you service – Include s thirty-eight workers in the sugar industry, some ofwhom were agriculturalists.
from village to village in search of better livelihoods.1*5 In some instances,
black residential and occupational mobility even helped anchor the devel
opment of certain townships, such as the village of Tonameca located in
the Pacific province of Guamelula (see Map 5.1).17 By the second half of
the eighteenth century, this town had come to possess the highest popula
tion density of blacks in the district. Although market forces did produce
important moments of opportunity that helped push and attract black
agriculturalists to various parts of the colony, not everyone heeded the
logic ofthe market. In the second half ofthe eighteenth century, as cotton
and sugar production reinvigorated the Pacific basin’s economy, causing
some free coloreds to move onto or near estates in areas such as Zacatula
(see Map 5.1), others opted not to leave their homes or change their long
established lifeways. In the province ofIgualapa, also in the Pacific basin,
as some blacks moved to take advantage of special economic opportuni
ties, others solidified their roots in the orbit of the great estates, forming
a number of black settlements in the Costa Chica whose cultural legacies
remain felt even today.’8
New Spain’s black agricultural and pastoral workers included a num
ber of individuals categorized as sirvientes (servants) and operarios (work
ers) who labored on estates, small farms, and ranches. It was generally
understood that many “servants” in rural areas did not always perform
domestic labor, but also worked in the agricultural and ranching profes
sions as assistants, peons, and farmhands. Their servant status probably
signaled a lower position within the labor hierarchy. A few rural servants
104 BEN VINSON III
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From Dawn ’til Dusk 105
were more specifically categorized as sirvientes de trapiches, meaning that
they worked on sugar cane mills. Operarios, meanwhile, typically referred
to unskilled industrial workers and manufacturers, particularly in urban
settings. But in the rural world of New Spain, many operarios worked on
plantations, haciendas, and cotton estates—sometimes as machinists, but
not necessarily. This intriguing group ofall-purpose black laborers prob
ably resembled the indiscriminate category of rural “trabajadores” (work
ers) found in regions like Tabasco.’9
After the agricultural and pastoral professions, the second largest
employment arena for the free coloreds surveyed in this sample was min
ing (see Table 5.1).20 It is almost certain that as future research allows us to
acquire more data on New Spain’s free-colored labor force, mining’s role
will diminish within the hierarchy of eighteenth-century Afro-Mexican
professions. As with the labradores and baqueros, the particularities ofthe
census make it hard to distinguish among miners. The category included
refiners, pick and blast men (who extracted ore from its deposit), whim
minders (who hoisted ore from shafts), smelters, amalgamators, foremen,
and peons alike. Needless to say, the skill level and pay scale of these
workers varied tremendously. Virtually all ofthe mining jobs in the data
sample were located in Guanajuato, the premier silver center of the late
colonial empire. In the 1790s, Guanajuato had a large black labor force,
much ofwhich was born in the city or its surrounding province, and that
had ancestral roots stemming back into the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.21 Despite the presence of black miners in other areas of the
colony, such as Taxco and Sultepec, it is unlikely that any mining cen
ter in the eighteenth century came close to matching Guanajuato’s black
workforce. Consequently, the total number of blacks in the Mexican min
ing industry must have assuredly been overtaken by othersectors offreecolored employment.
Among these were the transport and service industries,which included
porters, water carriers, muleteers, domestics, cooks, servants, laundresses,
and coachmen (see Table 5.1). If complete employment information was
available for women, we would also find more wet nurses, nannies, house
keepers, and attendants.22 One surprise is that muleteers (arrieros), who
have long been perceived as a niche profession for blacks, were relatively
few among employed free-colored males in the transport industry. Their
strongest representation came in the colony’s western highland regions
(Tixtla, Tlapa, and Chilapa) and in Guanajuato, which possessed over 250
io6 BEN VINSON III
black arrieros. Elsewhere, and especially in the majorregional market cities
ofPuebla, Oaxaca, Valladolid, and Orizaba, muleteers were almost absent.
What this suggests is that except for a few instances, many free-colored
muleteers tended to live in smaller towns along major thoroughfares that
tied together the colony’s primary markets.2* Another trend, more notice
able in the Pacific highlands than elsewhere, was evidence for the employ
ment offree coloreds as muleteers’ assistants de arrieros). These
workers were mainly responsible for helping pack and feed the animals,
while also assisting with driving mule trains from various mountainous
passageways down to the colony’s coastal and heartland zones
Artisans in the textile, dress, leatherworking, and shoemaking indus
tries competed fiercely with the service and transport sector for third
place within the free-colored occupational hierarchy (see Table 5.1). These
professions included tailors, seamstresses, cobblers, textile mill workers,
hatters, cloth cutters, needle makers, spinners, tanners, weavers, and rib
bon makers, among others. Some of these trades, such as cloth cutters
involved minimal expertise and were mainly considered to be manufac
turing professions. Others demanded superior craftsmanship and even
guild membership. During the colonial period, and especially during the
eighteenth century, free coloreds were known to have access to the upper
ranks ofseveral guilds and many emerged as examined masters in their
trades. However, in the census documents examined here, not a single
free-colored master artisan was found among the 11,000-plus laborers.2*
When combined with workers in the metal, woodworking, and pot
tery sector, as well as candlemakers, wax producers, and cigar makers,
the total population offree-colored artisans actually outnumbered those
employed in the service and transport industries. Of course, the lack of
information on women complicates matters.2* Like their male counter
parts, free-colored women were also employed as artisans, with perhaps
their heaviest representation coming in the textile industry. There were
probably significant numbers of black female confectioners and tobacco
factory workers as well. All of this begs the question: what was the likely
impact of females on the overall free-colored workforce? It is hard to say
with certainty, but it is highly probable that the number offemale artisans
never overtook the number of female service workers.26 Consequently,
women most likely affected the free-colored labor force by substantially
increasing the representation of service and textile workers in the labor
hierarchy. Moreover, it is likely that female representation increased the
From Dawn ’til Dusk 107
A Tale of Four Cities: Free-Colored Big City Labor
No single colony in the Spanish empire had two urban centers that rivaled
the size of Mexico City and Puebla in the late eighteenth century and,
quite possibly, few could boast the economic diversity and complexity of
Mexico’s four largest metropolises, including Guanajuato and Queretaro
(see Map 5.2). All dominated the political and economic landscapes oftheir
regions by buying goods and supplying manufactured wares, furnishing
credit for business ventures, as well as administering the greater affairs
of governance, justice, and military order. Collectively, these centers also
offered opportunities that were simply unavailable in smaller towns and
the rural countryside. Whereas one might be hard pressed to find a sil
versmith, painter, or teacher in less populated zones, in New Spain’s firstorder cities, such professions were more commonplace. Similarly, whereas
only a handful of occupational options existed in smaller towns, in places
like Mexico City there were well over six hundred different professions
available between 1790 and 1842.28 Of course, the industrial and service
functions of most cities meant that artisans and unskilled laborers com
prised the lifeblood of urban economies. In a typical Latin American
metropolis anywhere between 20 and 40 percent ofthe population worked
as artisans, while another 30 to 40 percent were unskilled laborers?9 As
might be expected, the status ofthese professions varied widely, and argu
ments can be made that the social position ofmany artisans did not match
their actual worth in the economy?0
By and large, free coloreds found themselves navigating the colonial
urban world of honor, position, and status by maximizing and exploit
ing whatever opportunities (big and small) their professions allowed. As
a general rule, free blacks found some of their best access to jobs in the
focal industries of the larger metropolises, in part because of the cities’
overwhelming need to furnish workers in these trades. These professions.
variety of trades to be found in the services, while raising the number of
workers in both the food industry and petty commerce—women worked
as waitresses, tortilla makers, street peddlers(selling stockings and combs),
fruit vendors, and druggists, among other positions?7 With female help,
the service industry probably surfaced as the second most important freecolored occupational arena (over mining), followed by the textile-related
craft trades.
io8 BEN VINSON III
in turn, linked free coloreds professionally to large swathes of the urban
populace, creating opportunities for importantshared identities that were
occupationally based and that could enable other forms of success. Like
other urbanites, free coloreds also found an impressive range ofjob oppor
tunities within the service and artisan sectors, but unique pressures shaped
the degree to which they were able to enter certain professions. Studying
the leading free-colored occupations among Mexico’s “big four” urban
centers uncovers some ofthe mixed patterns of opportunity and restraint
that structured these key sites ofthe Spanish colonial world.
Mexico City
With a population of between 100,000 and 200,000, Mexico City in the
1790s was by far the largest colonial capital under Iberian control and
definitely one of the great world metropolises.3″ Employing a workforce
of over 38,000 people, the amount of available adult human capital alone
was larger than most cities and, with steady flows ofimmigrants, Mexico
City was a place whose productive capacity continued to rise. The city was
also an important center of black life. At least seven thousand mulattos
resided in the capital, and combined with other blacks of varying hues,
the free and enslaved black population probably approached ten thou
sand, making it one ofthe single greatest concentrations of blacks in New
Spain.32 In studying the phenomenon of urban black labor, it makes sense
to start here.
Although records have survived ofapproximately fifty thousand ofthe
city’s residents in 1790, just three quadrants (cuarteles) will be analyzed (see
Map 5-3)-33 Cuartel 1, located downtown, was situated within the principal
site of commerce, government, and religious activity, being home to some
of the wealthiest and most powerful magnates of the colony. It was also
among the most homogenous and whitest parts of the city.34 Given that
the town center was the oldest section of the capital, it tended to conser
vatively replicate many staid and traditional social hierarchies. This was
despite heavier immigrantsettlement here than elsewhere in town.35 Most
newcomers were rapidly channeled into domestic service, which worked
to solidify the vertical hierarchical relationships that had operated in this
part ofthe capital since early colonial times.
Moving toward the western periphery (cuartel 23), Mexico City became
decidedly more working class. Despite housing the Alameda, a splendid
From Dawn ’til Dusk 109
J
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N
t t=>
park that was an attraction for the elite, most residents lived modestly.
They flocked into cramped quarters within large apartment complexes,
they resided in larger artisan workshops and suites, or, toward the outer
extremities (especially in the northwest), they dwelled in single house
hold shacks (jacales’) and multifamily corrales that had adjoining farming
plots.36 Wage and day laborers abounded, some working in the numerous
0
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ma p 5.3. Mexico City and cuarteles 1, 20, and 23.
Map drawn by Severine Rebourcet.
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IIO BEN VINSON III
convents and churches, others for a variety of workshops and local busi
nesses, and still others in the nearby tobacco factory, the largest ofits kind
in Mexico.37
Finally, near the southern periphery (cuartel 20) the city’s character
shifted again. Many of the areas surrounding Mexico City were thickly
populated with natives, especially regions that had been designated as
Indian “barrios’ shortly after the conquest. Here, natives had access to
their own governing officials and administrative structures, much like in
the indigenous townships that dotted the colony’s landscape. By the end
ofthe colonial period the more rigid boundaries had weakened, but native
influences remained strong. The southeastern edge ofthe city enveloped
some of the old Indian barrio of San Juan and, in cuartel 20, life was
largely agricultural, with farms, jacales, and corrales being prominent
residential structures.
When compared to the city as a whole, the black population in these
three sections of town was small, numbering just around five hundred
individuals. Nevertheless, their role in the urban labor scene is illuminat
ing. Previous work on Mexico City has shown that by the middle of the
eighteenth century, the urban workforce apparently adhered to a certain
racial logicwhereby different casta groupsreflected, mimicked, and resem
bled the employment patterns oftheir parent populations. In other words,
natives, who had traditionally fulfilled roles as the colony’s primary lowskilled laborers, continued to occupy these posts in the eighteenth cen
tury. In a similar vein, mestizos, who had partial native ancestry, could be
found filling positions as laborers to higher degrees than others, although
their partial white ancestry also opened opportunities in the artisan sec
tor. Meanwhile, the legacy ofslavery affected blacks and mulattos as freed
men. Because slavery had been heavily associated with domestic labor in
urban Mexico, it may have been more than a coincidence that overwhelm
ing numbers of free negros were found working as servants in the 1753
census.38 On the other hand, mixed-race mulattos, like the racially mixed
mestizos, had large numbers of artisans at midcentury. Still, over half of
mulatto males worked as servants or as members ofthe service sector.
Gender drew the boundaries between race and labor more starkly.
Black and mulatto women, for instance, who joined the workforce in far
greater proportions than did their white and mestiza counterparts, domi
nated the realm of domestic service. In fact, in 1753, 45 percent of the
city’s servants were mulatas. Few free-colored women found employment
From Davm ’til Dusk m
as seamstresses, spinners, or in other artisan trades. In interpreting the
racial logic of Mexico City’s labor scene, it is important to stress that
bloodlines alone did not simply “create” or “restrict” employment oppor
tunities. Rather, it was the networks that the different races had access to
and, quite possibly, the different socialization processes of these groups
that, along with skin color, influenced the functioning ofrace in the urban
employment arena.
Several of the basic labor market features found in 1753 continued to
apply in 1790 (see Table 5.2). The artisan trades and domestic service con
tinued to offer important employment options for mulattos. However, just
13 percent of the total mulatto population in the three cuarteles worked
as artisans. Mulatto men enjoyed an advantage in accessing these profes
sions, as roughly one-quarter were craftsmen, but these numbers paled in
comparison to midcentury, when approximately half of the mulatto men
surveyed were artisans. The substantially lower figure probably did not
reflect broader, city-wide patterns in the 1790s, since it is unlikely that
within a forty-year time span, the artisan professions would have closed
so tightly to mulattos. In fact, there are indications otherwise. Among all
races, roughly twenty thousand people were employed as artisans in the
1790s, corresponding to approximately half of the capital’s workforce.39
Moreover, as the artisan class grew in late eighteenth-century Mexico,
guild membership dwindled. Being released from the corporate protec
tions and protocols ofguild membership meant that more artisans worked
independently out oftheir homes or in the city’s emerging factories. Cor
respondingly, access to the artisan trades should have been easier, opening
up greater opportunities for the black population.
It is hard to determine from the available information how wide these
doors opened, but some patterns are clear. First, as in the mid-eighteenth
century, access to artisan positions fluctuated for free coloreds according
to skin color. In our three parts of town, negros were virtually excluded
from the artisan ranks in 1790, with only one shoemaker among them.
Even among mulattos, color mattered. Light-skinned mulattos, known as
moriscos, enjoyed greater access to artisan posts than their brethren. A
full 60 percent of moriscos (most of whom were men) were artisans (see
Table 5.2).40
Second, one’s location in Mexico City partly determined access to the
artisan trades. Certain professions were also clustered in specific neighbor
hoods. While well over half of free-colored artisans were located in the
III BEN VINSON III
Race Artisans Other Total
Mulatos
Moriscos
Negros
Total
208 (82%)
5 (28%)
10(91%)
223 (79%)
Service
Sector
33 (13%)
11 (61%)
1 (9%)
45 (16%)
4(2.0%)
1 (5.5%)
0 (0.0%)
5 (2.0%)
252 (100%)
18 (100%)
11 (100%)
281 (100%)
city center, in actuality seemingly better chances for entering the artisan
ranks could be found away from downtown. In the two peripheral cuarteles, although free coloreds were few in number, many were artisans. Over
one-third ofthe employed mulattos and all working moriscos were artisans
in cuartel 23. In the predominantly Indian environment ofcuartel 20, every
employed free colored was an artisan, except for a mulatto government
official, a morisco bread merchant, and a lone, anomalous, morisco servant.
Conversely, for free-colored women, opportunities for working in artisan
crafts remained small. In fact, only one, a seamstress, emerged in the sam
ple.41 It is telling that she was a light-skinned morisca who resided in the
central part of the city, where employment rates for free-colored women
ran highest and where the range of professions was greatest.42
By and large, domestic service predominated among free-colored
laborers in the center of town, where opportunities for working in elite
households abounded. In 1790, the four largest professions for mulatto
men and women included cooks, coachmen, young male attendants (mozos)
and female house cleaners {recantereras). Combined, they accounted for
well over half of the adult working population in the city center. Other
domestic professions were also well represented. Between kitchen helpers,
wet nurses, nannies, assistants (including female attendants called damns
de campania), caretakers of the elderly, washerwomen, convent servants,
Source: The information from this table is drawn from a database compiled by Herbert S.
Klein and Sonia Perez Toledo that analyzes the following census records: AHCM, Ciudad
de Mexico, vol. 1, exp. 2; vol. 4, exp. 6; and vol. 4, exp. 9. These records were initially
found by Manuel Mino Grijalva who coordinated the database entry and analysis effort.
t abl e 5.2. Free-Colored Workforce in Three Cuarteles ofMexico City, 1790
Commerce
and
Government
7 (3.0%)
1 (5.5%)
0 (0.0%)
8 (3.0%)
From Dawn ’til Dusk ii3
Puebla
New Spain’s second largest city was Puebla, lying just eighty’ miles east
of the capital. With a population of over fifty thousand in the late eigh
teenth century, Puebla ranked third or fourth in size among all Latin
American urban centers.46 But the city’s development had an uneven his
tory, especially during the 1700s. From a peak of over 65,000 in the late
seventeenth century, the eighteenth century witnessed considerable pop
ulation decline that was both demographic and economic in nature. Prior
to the 1650s, Puebla had been one of the principal suppliers of woolen
goods in the Spanish kingdom, as well as a major grain and flour producer.
Agricultural production was supplemented by products produced in the
male lackeys, porters and pages, roughly another quarter ofthe workforce
was accounted for. The remaining mulatto workers in the downtown area
were artisans, laborers, and pettymerchants, including a street vendor and
the owner of a small-time game of chance.
In Mexico City, household economies, and even the composition
of families, mattered a great deal toward securing economic prosperity.
Although relatively few free-colored women listed a profession in the
outer regions of the city, it is highly unlikely that they did not work.
Instead of laboring outside of the household, many worked at home for
their families in tasks that included sewing, farming, and cooking. Some
may have sold extra or leftover food to supplement their household’s
income. Children, too, were important in a household’s economy, and
although many did not formally declare a profession until age eighteen, it
was customary to help around the house and even take small jobs requir
ing little skill.43 Indicators further reveal that toward the end ofthe eigh
teenth century, family arrangements became more complex in Mexico
City as households expanded to incorporate friends, relatives, and strang
ers. Appended household members (agregados) formed part of an urban
strategy to pool and maximize resources for economic survival.44 Free
coloreds certainly participated in this practice, albeit to varying degrees.
In the three cuarteles, well over half (64 percent) of all households where
free coloreds lived either included agregados or featured free coloreds
as agregados themselves. Negros were more commonly encountered as
agregados than any other group, while moriscos stood at the other end
of the spectrum.45
114 BEN VINSON III
region’s tanneries, particularly ham, soap, and lard. Trade also thrived
and merchants took advantage of their relative proximity to the port of
Veracruz. Puebla was so successful that rumors even circulated ofrelocat
ing the viceregal capital there. But the eighteenth century brought dra
matic change. Stiff competition in agriculture and industry saw other
areas ofAlexico supplant Puebla’s dominion over the marketplace. Wheat
and grain production moved into the Bajio and Guadalajara, and a surging
Queretaro became a prime competitor in the textile industry. Eventually,
residents began leaving Puebla for better opportunities elsewhere, gen
erating a disturbing pattern of out-migration. Much like Boston during a
comparable period, eighteenth-century Puebla became subject to spurts
of growth and longer periods of decline.47 Agricultural expansion did
help the economy recover between 1760 and 1780, but modest gains were
tempered by epidemics and agricultural crises that hit hard between 1759
and 1773-48
Because ofthe rhythms ofthese economic cycles, Puebla found itself
in a slightly different position than Mexico City in the 1790s. As the colo
ny’s capital was experiencing the early stages of economic crisis that would
magnify in the nineteenth century, Puebla was actually enjoying a growth
spurt, albeit a short one.4^ European wars and their blew XA7orld theaters
interrupted the normal pace of international market flows, enabling the
city to export flour and foodstuffs to places like Havana at advantageous
prices. Textile manufacturing also enjoyed prosperity, as cotton was woven
on an unprecedented number of looms. But the cycle of war and peace
upon which Puebla’s economy rested during the late eighteenth century
was an acutely volatile one that would ultimately inhibit commercial mod
ernization efforts and sustained economic growth.50 Yet at the same time,
these forces brought nearly a decade ofprosperity in the 1790s that helped
condition the workforce, giving the city’s black working population a spe
cific occupational profile.
Puebla’s free-colored population was smaller than Mexico City’s. Its
urban core and surrounding district housed just 2,930 negros and mulattos
in 1777 (4.1 percent ofthe total population), a number that was probably
not greatly surpassed in the 1790s.51 Regardless, this group had become
rather influential, producing important merchant and artisan families, as
well as a host of high-ranking military officers.52 By the late eighteenth
century, the free-colored population had seemingly acquired distinct
niches in the marketplace.53
From Dawn ’til Dusk ii5
The city’s 1794 tributary census summarily described Puebla’s freecolored male workers as pardos54 who could primarily be subdivided
into three main groups: (1) a poorly paid and semiskilled majority,
(2) a more highly skilled middle stratum of artisans, and (3) a sizeable
but variegated third group that included a wide range of social classes
(see Table 5-3).55 The first and largest group of laborers, accounting for
nearly half (44 percent) of the male free-colored workforce, incorporated
just three professions—tejedores (weavers), tobacco factory workers, and
cocheros (coachmen). Meanwhile, just six professions comprised the second
group, which in turn accounted for roughly a quarter of the free-colored
workforce. These included hat makers, bakers, blacksmiths, cobblers, and
tailors. The final group was much harder to define. Consisting of almost
one-third of the overall labor pool, these men included merchants, musi
cians, businessmen, and artisans, as well as a smattering of peons, labor
ers, construction workers, agriculturalists, muleteers, and so on. Many of
the free coloreds working in the food industry, including confectioners
and cooks, were located here, as well as nearly all woodworkers, especially
carpenters and coach makers?6
Despite the variety of professions, this was not a very prosperous
group. There was only one high-status merchant among them and two
petty businessmen with small shops and street stands. A pardo coach
maker did operate in the city. Within the artisan trades, coach makers
commanded attention and respect, given that considerable expenditures
were needed to buy the supplies and facilities to start a business. Coaches
also tended to be bought by a well-to-do clientele, and prices climbed
into the hundreds of pesos.57 However, it is unclear whether Puebla’s
pardo coach-maker actually owned his business. This definitely would
have impacted his wealth. Prosperity may have more reliably touched the
city’s black tanners (tocineros’), an occupation that regularly drew sufficient
earnings to qualify for solid middle class standing in Puebla during the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?8 Highly regulated through
trade guilds, tocineros possessed a strong identity and political power that
translated into key seats on the city council. Moreover, as a measure of
their wealth, each tocinero was required by law to demonstrate the use
of at least thirty pig carcasses per week. This steady and high volume of
carnage was needed to display their financial solvency to the government,
particularly their ability to provide certain municipal services, such as fur
nishing horses to the militias.59
116 BEN VINSON III
TABLE
Occupation
91 19
66 14
52 11
Source-. BNAH, Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes, Expediente fonnado
en virtud de las diligencias hechas por los alcaldes ordinaries al gobernador intendente
Don Manuel de Flon, Puebla, 1795.
33
26
25
21
16
15
139
484
Percentage
ofWorkforce
7
5
5
4
3
3
29
100
While opportunities for wealth existed throughout the occupational
spectrum, it is difficult to know which individual artisans were able to
translate their craft trades into profitable business enterprises. By and
large, it seems, the city’s free-colored workforce stood with Indians near
the bottom ofPuebla’s social order.60 This observation needs some expla
nation. In many respects, the city’s male free-colored workers appeared to
resemble other non-Indians. For starters, as with castizos,6’ mestizos, and
whites, the proportion of artisans among free coloreds towered over the
percentage ofartisans in the native workforce and probably well outpaced
the share of black artisans employed in Mexico City’s workforce during
the 1790s. In fact, in 1794, over 80 percent of Puebla’s pardo males were
craftsmen, being largely employed in the clothing and textile industry.62
But a closer inspection of Puebla’s pardo population yields other
important details. Within the textile and clothing industry, free coloreds
Tejcdores (weavers)
Cigarreros
(tobacco factory workers)
Cocberos (coachmen)
Sowbrereros (hatters)
Herreros (blacksmiths)
Znpateros (cobblers)
Panaderos (breadmakers)
Sastres (tailors)
Albaiiiles (masons)
Others
Total
5.3. Free-Colored Workforce in Puebla, 1794
Number
ofWorkers
From Dawn ’til Dusk ”7
were more likely to find jobs as tejedores (weavers) than any other occu
pation. Over half of all male, free-colored textile workers in the 1794
census were weavers, which corresponded to 19 percent of the total male
free-colored workforce. No other occupation enjoyed such prominence.
While access to the trade definitely contributed to the large number of
free-colored artisans, on the other hand, a weaver’s earnings were among
the lowest in the city. Although weavers had long enjoyed a strong and
proud tradition in Puebla with a historically powerful guild, by the late
eighteenth century the average tejedor was earning around two reales a
day, approximately the pay of an agricultural peon and barely enough for
subsistence/’3 Unfortunately, these wages would dip further during the
early 1800s. Broadcloth weavers apparently earned more. Their greater
skill commanded higher prices, but there were only two free-colored
tejedores de ancho in the city during the early 1790s.
The second most common employment for Puebla’s pardos may have
been more lucrative. Along with Mexico City, Puebla was one of a few
locations in the colony with tobacco factories/4 These factories employed
about one thousand workers, almost equally balanced between men and
women. Puebla’s pardos comprised around 13 percent of the overall male
workforce in the industry, a figure that well exceeded their representa
tion in the general population. Most were bachelors, meaning that, by and
large, their earnings did not support wives and children, although some
may have given financial assistance to their relatives, illegitimate children,
and girlfriends. There was a wide variety ofspecialization among tobacco
workers, including a limited number of relatively well-paid “masters of
the table” and foremen who could earn in excess of one peso per day. Yet
there were also large numbers oflow-skilled workers, such as rollers, who
earned as little as one peso per month/5
The third largest profession for Puebla’s free coloreds was cocheros,
who regularly served as chauffeurs for the wealthy. At least 11 percent of
Puebla’s pardo males were coachmen in the early 1790s, who in turn com
prised over half of all free-colored men working in the service and trans
portsector. As with weavers, compensation for thisline ofworkwas meager,
with the average coachman struggling to earn a paltry two reales per day.
Turning to the middle tier ofPuebla’s workforce,panaderos(breadmak
ers) probably lived some of the most challenging lives. Historically, their
profession enjoyed a notorious reputation, with employees being chained
and locked in bakeries, sweating profusely under the heat of sweltering
118 BEN VINSON III
ovens. But by the second half of the eighteenth century working con
ditions had improved substantially. Prisoners were not to be impressed
into bakeries, hours were standardized, wages were to be paid daily (with
no unfair deductions), workers were allowed to live offsite, and earnings
could reach up to two reales per oven load of bread. Under these circum
stances, no less than halfofPuebla’s free-colored panaderos were married
and lived with their families in the community. However, opportunities
in the profession were limited. No free-colored overseers were recorded
as managing the city s bakeries, and it is unlikely that any were entrepre
neurs, owning their own panaderuts.66
Other members of the middle tier of Puebla’s free-colored male
workforce enjoyed greater material well-being. Once they landed steady
employment, they worked long hours in stores and shops typically owned
by others, or in small operations they owned themselves. The most pros
perous could afford to hire managers and assistants, who, working along
side them, added to profit margins and enabled commercial expansion.
Success was never assured. Of the middle strata, hat makers, who were
the most numerous, probably also possessed the greatest range in earning
potential. Depending upon their skill, clientele, the quantity’ of produc
tion, and the quality of their materials, hat makers could earn anywhere
between one and four reales per day, with master hatters faring even
better. A steady daily income of four reales was not quite middle-class
income, but it definitely distanced someone from the urban underclass.
The most accomplished hat makers in the city could easily break through
the middle-class ranks and into the elite. In the 1820s, some elite master
hatters earned in excess oftwenty-five reales per day, which exceeded the
earnings ofmany merchants.67
The city’s free-colored hatters were in small but good company in the
1790s. Blacksmithing, shoemaking, and tailoring provided staple employ
ment opportunities for the city’s free-colored population, as elsewhere in
urban New Spain. Within the textile industry, tailors probably fared bet
ter than the more numerous weavers and may have enjoyed more prestige.
Being one ofthe occupations furthest removed from the actual process of
cloth production, and with its employees having direct contact with the
consumer market, tailors enjoyed a certain cachet, although from the elite
perspective they remained the subject of ridicule.68 Overall, the number
of pardo tailors in Puebla was small, especially when compared to places
like Mexico City where, in the 1750s and possibly into the 1780s, tailoring
From Damn ’til Dusk 119
Guanajuato anti Queretaro
North of Mexico City, in a low-lying plain called the Bajio, rested one of
the most fertile and productive regions in the colony. Staple crops, includ
ing maize, wheat, beans, chilies, and fruit, grew abundantly here and silver
mining prospered, specifically in Guanajuato, which by the early 1800s was
generating more than five million pesos annually.69 Unsurprisingly, the
Bajio would become home to some of the largest population densities in
Mexico. By 1803, the province of Guanajuato alone boasted half a million
inhabitants.70 In its vicinitywere otherimportant centers, includingCelaya,
Leon, and Queretaro. Ofthese, Queretaro had gained a well-earned repu
tation as a textile center in the eighteenth century. Easy access to the mar
kets ofthe north, which both supplied wool to the city’s factories and served
as consumers ofwoolen products, greatly facilitated the city’s prominence.
Combined with a tobacco factory and a leatherworking industry7, Queretaro
had much to offer prospective settlers.71 Despite hard years (smallpox epi
demics erupted nearly every eighteen years after 1750), agricultural fail
ures, and testy politics (Guanajuato’s residents vociferously protested unfair
monopolies, policies, and taxes), the Bajio region grew.72 Queretaro and
Guanajuato, in fact, became the third and fourth largest cities in Mexico,
with populations of approximately thirty thousand in the 1790s. In their
hinterlands were secondary townships that anchored growth.73
Overall, the late colonial Bajio was an atypical region of Mexico.
Natives did not comprise a majority ofthe population, and most individu
als (including natives) lived in racially mixed townships, cities, or rural
estates. In this sense, the Bajio represented a prototype of what Mexico
would eventually become—a landscape where mestizos thrived as the pre
dominant racial type. But in the 1790s, the region had not quite achieved
this state and free coloreds were part ofthe reason. Ofthe 400,000 persons
counted in Guanajuato’s 1792 provincial census, over 72,000 (18 percent)
may have been the most accessible artisan trade. Tailors, like cobblers, had
fairly low overhead costs in starting their businesses. This made both pro
fessions attractive to a wide range of individuals. However, between the
two occupations, cobblers enjoyed a lower status. Status differences were
reflected in earnings. By the 1820s, a typical tailor in Puebla might earn
between one and eight reales per day, whereas cobblers more consistently
earned wages hovering at the one real mark.
120 BEN VINSON HI
were mulattos. In the city proper, mulattos numbered as many as seven
thousand individuals, or 22 percent of the urban population.74 Queretaro
offered a slightly different scenario. The province’s free colored popu
lation in 1791 was remarkably low, numbering just over three thousand
persons, or barely 4 percent of the regional population. Over half was
located in the city ofQueretaro itself.75 Free coloreds had historically been
more numerous; just eighteen years earlier the 1778 census had recorded
as many as seven thousand living in the city alone. The disappearance
of the black population may have been a harbinger of future events to
come throughout Mexico. Although smallpox wreaked havoc between
the censuses of 1778 and 1790, the rapid and almost wholesale decline of
Queretaro’s free-colored population probably had little to do with disease.
Instead, black losses were most likely attributable to their being rapidly
absorbed by other racial groups—at least in the official record. In other
words, changes in the racial criteria used by government census takers
may have been the real reason why, almost overnight, individuals who
were once deemed mulattos were now reclassified as mestizos.76
Given the centrality of mining and textiles to the economies of
Guanajuato and Queretaro, it is unsurprising that both would appear as
major areas of free-colored employment. What is surprising, however, is
the degree to which blacks occupied them. In Guanajuato, between 1791
and 1797’ n0 fewer than 4,659 individuals were employed in this sector,
comprising approximately 49 percent ofthe male, non-Indian workforce.77
Remarkably, mulattos, with over 1,800 workers, represented a full 40 per
cent of the mining industry, and six out of every ten working mulatto
males were miners. The related charcoal makers and refining industries
also employed large numbers of blacks (30 percent). No other racial group
had larger numbers in the mining sector.
Similarly, in Queretaro, free coloreds formed nearly 20 percent of
the non-Indian, male textile workforce. As in Guanajuato’s mining sec
tor, these figures significantly exceeded their representation in the city’s
population, with nearly four out of every ten black males working in tex
tiles. In the larger factories, free coloreds worked in almost every aspect
ofthe industry, although mainly as weavers, workers, and spinners. A few
labored in the finishing processes, that is, generating coarse cotton cloth
and making fine shawls. However, there were no black administrators and
dyers, although admittedly there were just a small number of these posi
tions available in the city. A handful ofQueretaro’s mulatto textile workers
From Dawn ’til Dusk 121
operated cottage industries of their own. There were seven recorded
trapicberos, who, in all likelihood, ran small family-style operations con
sisting of one or two looms.78
While the Queretaro census offers only a glimpse of an industry that
may have employed well over three thousand men and women during the
late colonial period, it is nevertheless a compelling view. Combined with
the data from Guanajuato, we clearly see that two of the most important
industrial fields in each city generously employed free people ofcolor. This
suggests that as the Mexican economy expanded in these areas, material
opportunities arose for blacks. While their occupations may not have been
the most coveted orlucrative positions, theywere opportunities nonetheless,
and ones that placed free coloreds directly in the mainstream workforce.
When Guanajuato’s and Queretaro’s free-colored occupations are
ranked according to the number of blacks they employed, a slightly dif
ferent picture emerges. In Queretaro, the four positions in which free col
oreds were occupied the most were split between the artisan and service
industries, with weavers and cobblers outpacing coachmen and servants.
In Guanajuato, the top six positions were divided between the mining,
farming, transport, and service industries (see Tables 5.4 and 5.5). These
differences most likely reflect the unique economic orientation of a min
ing center, as opposed to an industrial/manufacturing center. Queretaro
resembled Puebla in many ways and, to some extent, Mexico City. The
major difference was that in Queretaro there may have been greater occu
pational diversity among the top half of black laborers. In other words,
the four most commonly cited free-colored professions only represented
28 percent ofthe male workforce in Queretaro, whereasin Mexico City and
Puebla, roughly half of all male laborers fell into the top four trades.79
Guanajuato stood at the other end of the spectrum. Its top six posi
tions employed over three-quarters ofthe male workforce. Such extreme
lack of differentiation among free-colored workers may have been the way
of life in the largest mining towns, where the preponderance of mining
jobs was complemented with significant employment in the agricultural
and transportation sectors. In Guanajuato, however, as in many of the
urban areas examined in this chapter, blacks could not escape the pull of
the service economy. But in Guanajuato, service positions did not fall as
heavily on free-colored males as in the major manufacturing cities. In fact,
Spaniards actually composed the largest number ofservants, with mulat
tos emerging as one ofthe least likely groups to be employed in this task.
122 BEN VINSON III
TABLE
Occupation
78
Occupation
Source: Wu, “The Population ofthe City of Queretaro in 1791,” 293.
Tejedores (weavers)
Zapateros (cobblers)
Cigarreros (tobacco factory workers)
Cocheros (coachmen)
Criados (manservants)
Others
Total
Source: Brading, “Grupos etnicos,” 256.
“Represents the total of only the seven most numerous professions.
Mineros (miners)
Sirvientes (servants)
Labradorcs (farmers)
Arrieros(muleteers)
Molineros (millworkers)
Rescatadores (petty refiners)
Zapateros (cobblers)
Tratantcs (dealers)
Carboneros (charcoal-makers)
Sastrcs (tailors)
Albaiiilcs (masons)
Panaderos (breadmakers)
Herreros (blacksmiths)
Tocineros (tanners)
Carpinteros (carpenters)
Total’
4
66
100
Number
ofWorkers
79
33
29
28
23
375
567
Number
ofWorkers
1,881
143
139
108
101
79
73
39
38
35
32
32
24
13
11
3,132
Percentage
ofWorkforce
14
6
5
5
t abl e 5.5. Free-Colored Workforce in Queretaro, 1790
5.4. Free-Colored Workforce in Guanajuato, 1792
Percentage
ofWorkforce
60
4
4
3
3
2
2
From Dawn ’til Dusk 123
Conclusion
In no uncertain terms, by the end ofthe eighteenth century, Afro-Mexicans
were deeply embedded within the major occupational arenas available to
most colonists. In the hinterlands and countryside, free coloreds partici
pated in the cotton boom ofthe Pacific. Theyworked on estates and smaller
farms that generated key foodstuffs in the Mexican heartland; they toiled
in cane fields; and they labored tirelessly as fishermen, ranchers, and shep
herds. The evidence reveals that blacks contributed to the larger export
economies oftheirregions while also supplying local markets; free coloreds
even joined the legions ofsubsistence farmers throughout New Spain. Of
course, niche industries emerged, and some were partly determined by
racial status. Interestingly, this pattern was found to some degree in the
colony’s two great urban centers, as service labor soared within the down
town quarters ofMexico City and low-paying weavers disproportionately
occupied large numbers of Puebla’s free coloreds. While historians have
often cited cities as being the vanguard ofclass transformation and change,
as well as sites where a plebian (rather than a racial) consciousness came
into being, at the same time we have seen here how cities could preserve
elements of caste hierarchy. Ironically, this was expressed precisely -within
class mobility. In other words, as class mobility happened, and as it touched
those members of colonial society who belonged to subordinate castes, the
social hierarchies ofrace and caste were not necessarily ruptured (although
in some instances they could be). Instead, these social hierarchies could
be reworked and restructured to accommodate the occupational mobility
of groups such as free coloreds. Therefore, as broader economic oppor
tunities opened in certain urban areas, caste hierarch}’ could correspond
ingly shift to accommodate the changes to a city’s economic structure. As
a result, seeming advancements in job status could actually representstasis
in social standing. Mexico City and Puebla, two ofthe colony’s oldest cit
ies with some of the longest-serving elites, were natural places where one
might find such trends. On the other hand, some of the great bastions of
the new economy—Guanajuato and Queretaro—offered other possibili
ties. In both centers, mining and textiles generated seemingly wholesale
opportunities for all. But even here, black advancement to many of the
best positions tended to be restricted, thereby presenting a limited win
dow ofeconomic opportunity for the free-colored population. When step
ping back and looking at the overall portrait of black labor in the colony,
without a doubt we can say that free coloreds were very much a part of
124 BEN VINSON III
* NOTES
the economic life ofNew Spain, and quite possibly in ways that both mir
rored and rivaled the participation ofmestizos and other caste groups. But
it is still unclear whether, as blacks lived their freedom, they were as fully
vested in all the opportunities that the colonial economy had to offer and,
more importantly, what such a shortcoming may have meant on an indi
vidual and collective basis for free-colored life.
1. Archivo General de la Nacion (AGN), Tributes, vol. 34, exp. 7, don Benito
Perez to Revillagigedo, April 18, 1793, fols. 163-73.
2. AGN, Indiferentes de Guerra (LG.), vol. 307-B, Leberina Azebedo para que
no se remita a presidio a su marido, Vicente Medina, soldado del batallona de
pardos de Mexico.
3. AGN, I.G., vol. 307-B, exp. 5, Causa formada por el tribunal de la Acordada
contra Lucio Antonio Rodriguez, soldado del batallon de pardos de Mexico
por portador de arma corta.
4. Some classic works include: Eric Wiliams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel
Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1944); Walter Rodney, Hotv Europe
Underdeveloped Africa (Dar-Es-Salaam: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications,
London and Tanzanian Publishing House, 1973); Frank Tannenbaum, Slave
and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York: Vintage Books, 1946); Paul
Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1993) especially chap. 2; Gilberto Freyre, The
Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Developtnent ofBrazilian Civilization,
trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946); and Carl N. Degler,
Neither Black Nor White (New York: Macmillan, 1971)- See also: David Eltis,
The Rise ofAfrican Slavery in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1999); Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for
Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1995),
Laurent Dubois, A Colony ofCitizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the
French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers); Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Colombia, 1770-1877 (Chapel
Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2003).
5. Throughout this chapter the term “free colored” is used to refer to a variety
of black populations, including racially mixed pardos (black/native mixture),
mulattos (black/white mixture), and moriscos (light skinned mulattos).
From Dawn ’til Dusk 125
Morenos and negros were synonymous terms referring to blacks who were not
racially mixed.
6. Some examples can be found in the following edited collections: Luz Maria
Martinez Montiel and Juan Carlos Reyes G., eds., Memoria del HI Encuentro
National de Afromexicanistas (Colima, Mexico: Gobiemo del Estado de Colima
y Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1993); Adriana Naveda
Chavez-Hita, ed., Pardos, mulatosy libertos, Sexto encuentro de afromexicanistas
(Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veracruzana, 2001); and Luz Maria Martinez
Montiel, ed., Prcsenda africana en Mexico (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional
para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994).
7. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, La poblacion negra de Mexico: Estudio etnohistdrico,
3rd ed. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1989), 219, 230.
8. For more on the period from the 1640s into the eighteenth century, see:
Dennis N. Valdes, “The Decline of Slavery in Mexico,” The Atnericas 44,
no. 2 (1987): 167-94; Frank Proctor III, “Slavery, Identity, and Culture: An
Afro-Mexican Counterpoint, 1640-1763,” Ph.D. diss., Emory University,
2003; Flerman L. Bennett, Colonial Blackness, Sin, Sex, and Emergent Private
Lives in New Spain, 1622-1778 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,
2009). For good material on miscegenation see: Patrick J. Carroll, “Los
mexicanos negros, el mestizaje y los fundamentos olvidados de la ‘raza
cosmica,’ una perspective regional,” Historia Mexicana XLIV, no. 3 (1995):
403-48; and Monica Leticia Galvez Jimenez, Celaya: sus raices africanas
(Guanajuato, Ediciones la Rana, 1995).
9. The number offive hundred morenos is most likely a low figure since not all
of the colony’s provinces are accounted for in the archives. The number of
“Africans” most likely corresponds to blacks who were not racially mixed, but
there is no way to completely confirm this.
10. Some interpretations of Mexican slavery show how the system offered a
variety of challenges to the power ofmasters and perhaps even a few material
advantages over Mexico’s underclass. For good examples ofscholarship on the
autonomy that slaves were able to acquire, see: Herman L. Bennett, Africans
in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-creole Consciousnsess,
1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003); Javier VillaFlores, ‘“To Lose One’s Soul’: Blasphemy and Slaveiy in New Spain,
1596-1669,” The HispanicAmerican Historical Review (HAHR) LXXXII, no. 3
(2002): 435-69;Joan Cameron Bristol, “Negotiating Authority in New Spain:
Blacks, Mulattos, and Religious Practice in Seventeenth Century Mexico,”
Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2001; and Proctor, “Slaveiy, Identity,
and Culture.”
126 BEN VINSON III
11. Aguirre Beltran, La poblacion negro, 223-30. There has been a great deal of
guesswork involved with understanding the dimensions of Afro-Mexican
demography; however, the figures provided by Aguirre Beltran still remain
fairly reliable.
12. These are estimates. Unfortunately, we may never be able to get a complete
portrait of free-colored demography during these years. For all of its
strengths, the surviving documents of the Revillagigedo census only allow
us to closely examine some of the free-colored population. Note that the
sampling technique I have used to obtain occupational information in the
west coast provinces results in an undercount of the male population. To
obtain information for these areas, I used the military census summary sheets
of the Revillagigedo census. These records yield information on the most
active segment of the male population, generally men between the ages of
eighteen and forty-two who were in good physical condition and were not
exempted from duty. Exemptions included men with disabilities or who
were “demented” and unable to work. However, men already serving in the
militias were also exempted. Only eight provinces were affected by these
sampling techniques, resulting in the exclusion of 1,141 individuals from the
occupational survey.
13. When all of the various agricultural and pastoral professions are accounted
for, Mexico’s black population was still less agriculturally centered than
in the neighboring United States. Over 74 percent of all Americans were
agriculturalists in 1800, and even more blacks (mainly slaves) as opposed to
just over half of free Afro-Mexicans. See: Thomas Weiss, “U.S. Labor Force
Estimates and Economic Growth,” in American Economic Growth and Standards
ofLiving before the Civil War, ed/ Robert E. Gallman and John Joseph Wallis,
22 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
14. Those who have wrestled with such questions include Brigida von
Mentz, Pueblos de indios, mulatos y mestizos, 1770-1870. Los catnpesinos y las
transformaciones protoindustriales en el poniente de Morelos (Mexico City:
CIESAS, 1988), 130-37; and Cheryl English Martin, Rural Society in Colonial
Morelos (Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1985).
15. Isabel Gonzalez Sanchez, “Sistemas de trabajo, salarios y situacion de los
trabajadores agricoloas, 1750-181 o,” in La Clase Obrera en la Historia de Mexico,
ed. Enrique Florescano, Isabel Gonzalez Sanchez,Jorge Gonzalez Angulo,
Roberto Sandoval Zarauz, Cuauhtemoc Velasco A., and Alejandra Moreno
Toscazo, 157 (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1980). For full treatment on rural
workers’ lives and conditions see 125-72. Note also that good distinctions
between dependent and independent labor are made in Matthew Restall,
From Dawn ’til Dusk 127
more defined in larger
: operarios who worked
The Black Middle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). See especially
Chapter 4, entitled “Ways ofWork.”
16. For an interesting interpretation of black labor mobility in the Pacific region
see:Jose Arturo Motta Sanchez, “Derrota a la Mar del Sur; trazas de una senda
de afrosucesores libres y cautivos en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” in
Diaspora, Nation y Diferencia: Poblaciones de origen Africano en Mexico y Centro
America, CD ROM (Mexico, Universidad de Guanajuato, 2008 – Affordable Custom Essay Writing Service | Write My Essay from Pro Writers). For additional
analysis of free-colored labor in the Pacific basin, see Ben Vinson III, “West
Side Story: Free-Black Labor in tire Mexican Pacific during theLate Colonial
Period as Seen Through tire Revillagigedo Census,”Journal ofColonialism and
Colonial Histmy 10, no. 3 (2009), available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/
journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history.
17. Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography ofNew Spain (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1972), 124-26.
18. Daniele Dehouve, Entre el caiman y eljaguar: Los pueblos indios de Guerrero
(Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia
Social, 1994), 104-7, 11 L ar*d 114; Jesus Hernandez Jaimes, “El comercio de
algodon en las cordilleras y costas de la mar del sur de Nueva Espana en la
segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” in Mercaderes, comercio y consulados de Nueva
Espana en elsiglo XVIII, ed. Guillermina del Valle Pavon, 237-44 (Mexico City:
Institute Mora, 2003); Ben Vinson IH, “The Racial Profile of a Rural Mexican
Province in the ‘Costa Chica:’ Igualapa in 1791,” TheAmericas(JAM) 57, no. 2
(2000): 269-82.
19. The specific tasks performed by operarios could be 1
urban areas. In Mexico City, for instance, there were
specifically in bakeries and others who toiled in the treasury. But in large
cities like Guadalajara and Guanajuato, operarios could equally remain part
of an amorphous and anonymous mass of low-wage laborers. For more,
consult: Rodney D. Anderson, “Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison
of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in
1821,” HAHR 68, no. 2 (1988): 209-43; Cuauhtemoc Velasco Avila, “Los
trabajadores mineros en la Nueva Espana, 1750-1810,” in La Close Obreru,
291-99; and Sonia Perez Toledo and Herbert S. Klein, Poblacidn y cstructura
social de la Ciudad de Mexico, 1790-1842 (Mexico Citv: Universidad Autonoma
Metropoloitana Unidad Iztapalapa (UAMI), 2004), 295.
20. Slaves continued to have a presence in mining as well, see Brigida von
Mentz, “Esclavitud en centres mineros y azucareros novohispanos. Algunas
propuestas para el estudio de la multietnicidad en el centre de Mexico,” in
Poblacionesy culturas de origen africano en Mexico, ed. Maria Elisa Velasquez and
128 BEN VINSON III
Ethel Correa, 259-67 (Mexico City: Institute Nacional de Antropologfa e
Historia (INAH), 2005).
21. David A. Brading, “Grupos etnicos; Clases y estructura ocupacional en
Guanajuato (1792),” in Historiaypoblacion en Mexico (SiglosXVI-XIX) (Mexico
City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1994), 244; and Colin A. Palmer, Slaves ofthe
White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1550-1650 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1976). Note that in Guanajuato, as in other Mexican mining regions,
many of the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century black miners were
slaves. As slavery subsided, the offspring of the unions between slaves and
freedmen generated an appreciable free-colored population. Many of them
also became miners, but migrator}’ flows brought new infusions of black
workers. Again, the phenomenon was not unique to Guanajuato. In Sultepec,
for instance, a local priest recounted diat “mining attracted many ‘foreigners,
the whitest of which look black.’” See Von A’lentz, “Esclavitud en centres
mineros,” 264.
22. Some excellent occupational information for women in Mexico City can
be found in Maria Elisa Velazquez, Mujeres de origen africano en la capital
novohispana, sigios XVIIy XVIII (Mexico City: INAH, Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers), 161-228; and Elisa Velazquez, “Amas
de leche, cocineras y vendedoras: Mujeres de origen africano, trabajo y culture
en la ciudad de Mexico durante la epoca colonial,” in Poblaciones y culturas
africano, 335-56.
23. Matthew Restall finds this trend in a rural Yucatecan census from 1700 where
all three free-colored muleteers lived in the transportation hub of Maxcanu;
see Restall, The Black Middle, chap. 4.
24. A wonderful survey of Mexico’s artisan trades remains: Manuel Carrera
Stampa, Los gremios Mexicanos: La organization gremial en Nueva Espana,
1521-1861 (Mexico City: EDIAPSA, 1954). For information on blacks in
the gold and silversmithing trade see:John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs:
Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University ofNew
Mexico Press, 1983). For discussion of the career ofJuan Correa, a famous
free-colored artist and guild overseer, see: Elisa Vargas Lugo, Juan Correa. Su
vidaysu obra, 4 vols. (Mexico City: UNAM, 1985-1994). Norah Andrews has
also found a handful of black guild masters in Puebla in 1800. They included
furniture makers, cobblers, blacksmiths, hatters, and tailors. See Norah
Andrews, ‘“I Could not Determine the Truth’: Ambiguity and Afromexican
Royal Tribute,” Master’s thesis,Johns Hopkins University, 2009, 23.
25. Evaluating the role ofwomen in the colonial period’s labor force has posed
a particular challenge in places such as the United States, but in Latin
From Dawn ’til Dusk 129
America, more data is available. Although richer, problems persist given the
inconsistent and spotty reporting of female occupations. This situation can
be found in late colonial Mexico’s census records, especially the Revillagigedo
census.
26. This is speculative, but also fits with observations found in Mexico City
by Silvia Arrom, The Women ofMexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1985), 158-66; Patricia Seed, “The Social Dimensions of
Race: Mexico City 1753,” HAHR LXII, no. 4 (1982): 569-606; and Maria Elisa
Velazquez, “Juntos y revueltos: Oficios, espacios y comunidades domesticas de
origen africano en la capital novohispana segun el censo de 1753,” in Pautasde
convivencia etnica en la America Latina colonial (Indios, negros, mulatos, pardosy
esclavos), ed.Juan Manuel de la Serna Herrera, 331-46 (Mexico City: UNAM,
2005). Note, however, that there is only limited utility in making colony-wide
generalizations from the Mexico City case.
27. Again, for excellent treatment see Arrom, Women ofMexico City, 154-205.
28. PerezToledo and Klein, Poblaciony estructurasocial, 285-99.
29. Susan M. Socolow, “Introduction,” in Cities and Society in Colonial Latin
America, ed. Louisa Schell Hoberman and Susan M. Socolow, 15-16
(Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1986).
30. Lyman Johnson, “Artisans,” in Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America,
234-36.
31. Note that population figures for Mexico City are a matter of debate for
the 1790s. Viceroy Revillagigedo ascertained that the population stood at
112,000. Other contemporaries argued larger numbers and recent research
has shown that the city may have possibly held up to 300,000 individuals.
See Manuel Mino Grijalva, “La poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico en 1790.
Variables economicas y demograficas de una controversy,” in La poblacion de
la ciudad de Mexico en 1790: Estructura social, alimentationy vrvienda, ed. Manuel
Mino Grijalva and Sonia Perez Toledo, 21-74 (Mexico City: UAMI, 2004).
Sonia Perez Toledo has weighed into the argument, calculating the number
closer to 117,000. See Perez Toledo and Klein, Poblacion y estructura social,
64. Keith Davies’s pioneering study calculates die population at 130,000. See
Keith Davies, “Tendencias demograficas urbanas durante el siglo XIX en
Mexico,” in Historiay poblacion, 281-82. Whatever the actual number, the city
was extremely large by contemporary standards in die Western world.
32. The figures for mulattos are derived from Alexander von Humbolt, Political
Essay on the Kingdom ofNew Spain, 2 vols., trans. John Black (New York:
I. Riley, 1811), 1:192.
I3O BEN VINSON III
33. These quadrants are cuarteles 1, 20, and 23, and had a total population of
over thirteen thousand individuals. The database for these cuarteles has been
generously provided by Herbert S. Klein. Note that these quarters have also
been studied in depth by members ofthe urban history’ seminar run by the
Colegio de Mexico.
34. For an excellent graphic representation ofthe ethnic composition of Mexico
City at the outset of the nineteenth century see: Lourdes Marquez Morfin,
“La desigualdad ante la muerte: Epidemias, poblacion y sociedad en la ciudad
de Mexico (1800-1850),” Ph.D. diss., El Colegio de Mexico, 1991,59.
35. Perez Toledo and Klein, Poblaciony estructura social, 94.
36. A good study of the use of residential and public space in the center and
western parts of Mexico City’ can be found in Diana Birrichaga Gardida,
“Distribution del espacio urbano en la ciudad de Mexico en 1790,” in La
poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico, 311-41.
37. In the late colonial period, the tobacco factory’ was responsible for employ’ing
up to 11 percent ofMexico City’s population. Many’ employ’ees were women
who were paid competitive wages. Some incomes even rivaled several artisan
trades. For more, see Amparo Ros, La production tigarrera afinales de la Colonia.
Lafdbrica en Mexico (Mexico City’: INAH, 1984). For more on the industry,
see Susan Deans-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making ofthe
Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University’ ofTexas Press, 1992).
38. Patricia Seed records that 81.5 percent of free black males were servants.
Seed, “Social Dimensions ofRace,” 582.
39. Concentrated mostly’ in the textile, food, leatherworking, metal, and barbering
industries, many’ of these staple arenas of the workforce had long been
important niches for free coloreds, particularly the professions of zapateros
(shoemakers) and sastres (tailors). See Perez Toledo, Los hijos del trabajo. Los
artesanos de la ciudad de Mexico, 1780-1853 (Mexico City: El Colegio de
Mexico, UAMI, 1996), 78; Mino Grijalva, “Estructura social y ocupacion de la
poblacion en la ciudad de Mexico, 1790,” in Lapoblacion en la ciudad de Mexico,
160; and Felipe Castro Gutierrez, La extintion de la artesania gremial (Mexico
City’: UNAM, 1986), 97, 172-80.
40. There were only’ seventeen employed morisco men in the sample. Of these,
ten were artisans and one was a foreman.
41. There was also a bolero, a professional shoe polisher. I would categorize
her as being employed in the service sector, but Perez Toledo and Klein’s
categorization of professions in Poblacion y estructura social, 287, listed her as
an artisan. Ifthis person was considered by contemporaries to be an artisan, it
is telling that this lower status trade (when compared to the seamstress) was
From Dawn ’til Dusk I3I
held by a midata (phenotypically darker than the morisca seamstress), and
that she also worked in die city center.
42. For an excellent study ofthe range of professions open to men and women in
Mexico City in the late colonial and early national period, see Perez Toledo
and Klein, Poblacion y estructura social, 285-99. The definitional description of
many professions can be found in PerezToledo, Loshijosdel trabajo, 55-56 and
269-74. Note that nearly half ofthe forty-four professions listed for mulattos
in cuartel 1 incorporated women, whereas in the other two parts oftown, just
four out ofseventeen professions included them. Also, over half of all freecolored females were listed as being employed downtown, whereas almost
none were recorded as working in the southern and western peripheries. Of
course, this statistic is somewhat misleading since, in actuality, labor was a
daily reality for most free-colored women.
43. In the literature on North America, age ten has been identified as a typical
age for children entering the workforce in pre-industrial and early industrial
societies. A similar case might be made for Latin America. Of course, some
exceptions exist. See John E. Murray and Ruth Wallis Herndon, “Markets for
Children in Early America: A Political Economy of Pauper Apprenticeship,”
Journal ofEconomic History 62, no. 2 (June 2002): 356-82.
44. Indeed, the importance offamily as an economic survival mechanism may have
been more pronounced in Mexico than in Europe. Michael C. Scardaville,
“Trabajadores, grupo domestico y supervivencia durante el periodo colonial
tardio en la ciudad de Mexico, o ‘la familia pequena no vive mejor,’” in La
poblacion de la ciudad de Mexico, 227-79.
45. Eighty percent of households with negros had agregados (or featured negros
as agregados) as opposed to less than 50 percent for moriscos. Note that
free-colored households with agregados in Mexico City were harder to find
outside of the city center, with barely one-third of free-colored households
in the urban periphery possessing them. Surprisingly, morisco families were
almost twice as likely to have agregados in die city as mulattos.Although more
research is needed, suffice it to say that in the outskirts of town, members of
the working classes, including free coloreds, probably lived in smaller family
units than in the urban core, although one frequently encountered multiple
families living together in the same household. Moreover, unlike elite families
of the era, with their large number of retainers and domestic staff, freecolored working-class households in the periphery probably did not regularly
incorporate individuals who were not their relatives. Consequently, although
household living arrangements generally grew more complex over time in
Mexico City’-, among the black working classes, unrelated agregados did not
comprise a large part of their expanding households. For a slightly different
BEN VINSON HI I32
interpretation of the circumstances in Mexico City, see Velazquez, “Juntos y
revueltos,” 331-46. She contradicts notions that many laborers in the central
part oftown lived with coworkers, and so on.
46. Socolow, “Introduction,” 5.
47. Carlos Contreras Cruz, Francisco Tellez Guerrero, Claudia Pardo Hernandez,
Meliton Mirto Tlalpa, “La poblacion parroquial en la Puebla de los Angeles
hacia 1777. El caso del Sagrario, San Marcos, y San Jose, analisis preliminar,”
in Poblacion y estructura urbana en Mexico, siglos XVIIIyXIXCarmen Blazquez
Dominguez, ed. Carlos Contreras Cruz, and Sonia Perez Toledo, 21-23
(Xalapa, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, 1996); Guy P. C. Thomson,
Puebla de los Angeles: Industry and Society in a Mexican City, 1700-1850
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), xx.
48. Miguel Marin Bosch, Puebla neocolonial, 1777-1851. Casta, ocupacion y
matrimonio en la segunda ciudad de Nucva Espana (Zapopan,Jalisco: El Colegio
de Jalisco, 1999), 65.
49. Grijalva, “Estructura social y ocupacion,” 158-59.
50. Thomson, Puebla, 14-26 and 42-46.
51. Ibid., 63. Note that the total district population was 71,366.
52. Ben Vinson III, Bearing Annsfor His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in
Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 60-61.
53. The 1790 census is limited in that it provides information on only four
parishes, corresponding to roughly a third of the population, all of whom
lived in the eastern and western peripheries of the city. Downtown elite
households were excluded, meaning that many individuals working in the
service sector were probably not accounted for. The 1794 census, which
was actually initiated in 1791, is more comprehensive and may cover all
free-colored residents in the city. But given that this census was raised to
count tributaries and followed a different format than parish or even military
censuses, it is not possible to carefully reconstruct where residents lived in the
city (Subdireccion de Documentation de la Biblioteca Nacional de Historia
(BNAH), Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes, Expedience
formado en virtud de las exigencies hechas por los alcaldes ordinaries al
gobernador intendente don iManuel de Flon con el fin de cobrar tributos de
negros y mulatos, Puebla, 1795).
54. In this census, the term pardo is considered synonymous with mulatto and
referred to racially mixed individuals, but was not specific as to whether the
black admixture was with native, white, or other mixtures. It is unlikely that
From Dawn ’til Dusk 133
can be found in Marin Bosch, Puebla
the entire population was pardo—but for uniformity, this was die designation
used. Also note that the 1794 tributary census excluded female professions.
55. Professions qualifying for the first group employed 10 percent or more of
the free-colored population. For group 2, professions employing 5 percent or
more ofthe free-colored population were considered.
56. By 1800 the black labor force experienced some minor shifts in focus.
Cobblers surpassed weavers as the leading black profession and hatters rose
to claim the third most prominent role. Combined, these three professions
claimed about 35 percent of the black labor pool. Cigar factory workers
virtually disappeared, while coachmen slipped into a tertiary position. This
reshuffling of occupational rankings probably reflected change in Puebla’s
broader economy; but at its core, the main occupational opportunities
remained, although their emphases altered slighdy. One could argue that in
some ways, by 1800, there were slightly better financial opportunities open
to free coloreds, given the way in which occupations were realigned and the
number ofmaster artisans found in the census record. See Andrews, “I Could
not Determine the Truth,” 23.
57. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, 218-19.
58. Tanners included both curtidores and tocineros—but the tocineros were the
higher status of the two. There were ten free-colored curtidores and six
tocineros in Puebla in 1794.
59. Thomson, Puebla, 85.
60. An interesting examination of this
neocolonial, 147-68.
61. A castizo was a light skinned mestizo—technically the mixture ofa white and
a mestizo.
62. Anywhere between 20 and 30 percent of Puebla’s urban workforce was
employed in textiles. But more significantly, over 40 percent of non-Indians
worked in these trades during the early 1790s, a trend closely mirrored by
free coloreds. Natives, by contrast, tended to be more heavily concentrated
in the agricultural, food, and construction professions, where blacks were
only minimally involved. See Thomson, Puebla, 69; and Marin Bosch, Puebla
neocolonial, 147-50. Marin Bosch’s numbers tend to be lower than those of
Thomson’s, favoring the 20 percent overall figure. His analysis covers more
time and includes parish data. Note that the large proportion of artisans
found among the pardos was probably similar to the city’s mestizo and castizo
workforce. It is hard to accurately gauge the number of artisans among
these populations using available sources, but it is possible that, as with free
coloreds, they may have comprised between 60 and 80 percent of mestizo.
BEN VINSON III 134
castizo, and even white laborers.The number of artisans is roughly calculated
by totaling the number of white, mestizo, and castizo workers in the textile,
dress, metal, leather, wood, and “other” industries (data from Thomson,
Puebla, 69). Because this is incomplete data for the entire city in 1790, there
are gaps in our knowledge, but the information still provides us with a
loose guide for understanding what may have been the overall employment
situation.
63. Gonzalez Sanchez, “Sistemas de trabajo,” 150-72. For more explanation of
the cloth manufacturing process see: Manuel Mino Grijalva, La tnanufactura
colonial. La constitution tecnica del obraje (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico,
1993)-
64. Other locations included Queretaro, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and Orizaba.
65. Ros, La production tigarrera, 58.
66. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, 187-96.
67. Salary figures for hatters and coachmen come from 1823 estimates. See
Thomson, Puebla, 83.
68. AGN, Alcaldes Mayores, vol. 2, exp. 254, Joseph Enereno to Bucareli,
December 21,1771, Puebla.
69. A still relevant, perceptive, and classic study ofmining in Guanajuato is David
Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763—1810 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971).
70. Humbolt, Political Essay, II: 129.
71. Celia Wu, “The Population of the City of Queretaro in 1791,” Journal of
Latin American Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 277; and Humbolt, Political Essay,
L129-31.
72. Angela T. Thompson, “To Save the Children: Smallpox Inoculation,
Vaccination and Public Health in Guanajuato, Mexico, 1797-1840,” TAM 29,
no. 4 (1993): 435.
73. Humboldt, Political Essay, IL131; Gerhard, Historical Geography ofNew Spain,
123.
74. Information on the racial dynamics of the Bajfo is well covered in Brading,
Miners and Merchants, 227-30. For Guanajuato census information, see
pages 227 and 247-60. Note that there are two differing census figures for
Guanajuato. One is based upon a summary sheet and estimates the urban
population at over 32,000. Another, based upon a military census that excludes
many Indians, places the population at over 21,000. In the second census
record, the number ofmulattos is lower (3,481). The figure ofseven thousand
mulattos is based on the summary sheet.
From Daivn ’til Dusk B5
75. Statistics are from Wu, “Queretaro,” 278-79. Note that free coloreds may
have comprised up to 7 percent ofQueretaro’s population in 1791.The figure
of 7 percent for the free-colored population in Queretaro is my estimate
based upon blending figures from summary sheets and the military census.
I calculate the 1,755 mulattos in Queretaro, against the 27,000 figure for the
city, as opposed to the 14,847 found in the Revillagigedo census, which leaves
out many ofthe natives.
76. These arguments are put forth by Wu, “Queretaro,” 279. It is unclear if the
enumerators were primarily responsible for the change, or if individuals
declared themselves to be of a different casta from one census to another.
Another possibility is that the quality of census taking changed over time.
77. ~ Hire our professional writers now and experience the best assignment help online with our custom paper writing service. We ensure your essays and assignments are expertly researched, written and delivered on time. ~ Grading, Miners and Merchants, 258. Note that Indians were largely excluded
from this military census and their numbers cannot be fully determined in the
workforce. Female professions were also excluded.
78. Wu, “Queretaro,” 294-95.
79. Of course, more work needs to be done to support this conclusion. The
greater diversity of Mexico City’s economy, for instance, probably yielded
greater potential for increasing free-colored occupational options.

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